“Sly as a fox” is not just a saying somebody made up.
Foxes are cunning and wary. Just ask Bill Powers of Murrysville, who’s been trying to successfully train a wildlife camera on a wild fox den since 2016.
“They’re so sensitive that, if they sense a human has been around, they’ll move the kits to another den,” said Powers, who owns PixCams, which specializes in high-quality livestreaming wildlife cameras. “The first time we filmed it was 2016, and I ended up moving the camera four or five times, moving it farther and farther from the den and zooming in.”
This spring, he lucked out — a camera that had already been in place for two years began to return video of a denning pair of foxes that are now raising a half-dozen kits, tucked away under a large rock overhang in the woods near Powers’ home.
“We’re livestreaming it in 1440p with great quality,” Powers said.
The PixCams website has 34 wildlife livestreams going, monitoring everything from owl and eagle nests to the massive elk wandering the forests of north-central Pennsylvania.
The thing Powers is most excited about — even though it puts the entire fox family in jeopardy — is the group’s interaction with the local coyote population.
“Today the coyote showed up three times, in the daylight, which is something you rarely see,” he said. “We have a video on our YouTube page where the kits are outside the den playing, then all of a sudden they scatter and a coyote zooms into the frame. I’m not sure if anyone’s ever really had a chance to film something like that before.”
Powers said he expects the kits to remain close to the den until summer.
“The parents will start taking them out to hunt, and they’ll keep coming back to the den until sometime in July, when they usually start to disperse,” he said.
For more, or to view the livestream, see PixCams.com and click on the “Live Cams” link.
